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Belonging

I’ve been studying suicide prevention and one of the protections from Suicide is “Belongingness”
Word!!

But the truth of the matter is we have to cultivate even now in our increasingly LGBT open society
a bit of “belongingness.” And we have to figure out how to make that happen for others.

Provincetown Massachusetts and a few other spots around the country and indeed the world, feel like home in a way
that no place else feels like. When summer is over and June Prides are done we go back to some isolation.
Gay bars and meetups are scattered around major cities, but we live all over and that is not enough.
Our lives are as hectic as everybody else’s. Getting to a meetup or Gay bar 30-60 minutes away isn’t always feasible.
Many of us do not just identify LGBT, but in the core of our soul we are always LGBT. We need connection.
We need to unite as LGBT nation to take care of our own issues and more importantly to take care
of the issues of our brothers and sisters.

Among the fastest growing homeless individuals are youth who “come out” and then are thrown out by families. We forget how hard it is to come
out, if we have successfully navigated the rainbow. But for far too many people, “coming out” still means losing everything, loosing family, tradition, employment, friends, religion and all the things that keep us grounded as individuals.

As the national dialogue leaps ahead of the little enclaves of society, it is important that we help those trying to come out to stay connected
year long. We may be out in Boston, Ptown, LA, South Beach, Fire Island, NY, Chicago, SF and other places in the U.S., but are we truly out in Everytown, USA? We have many victories in our back pocket, but I have met people who migrate towards New England in search of “Safe Gay” only to find it’s still a secret. It’s not well known or is confined only to unique spots in the city or tourist locations.

LGBT nation needs to be as local as your town’s social clubs like, The American Legion, the French American Club, the Sons of Italy, or the VFW or the church hall. Stonewall was just a beginning. Pride is just a beginning.

There’s a place for us, somewhere, everywhere where we can always belong. We have to figure out how to keep the doors open and the lights on in that space everyday.